Andrea Carson Barker

She returned to Toronto in 2003 after having spent six years in London where she managed several art galleries and received her Masters degree in Art Criticism from City University (UK). Carson has curated a number of projects, including Revealed: New Canadian Video, a screening at Canada House, Trafalgar Square, London (2003) and Four Directions, in collaboration with No. 9: Contemporary Art & the Environment at Toronto’s Brickworks (2010). Her broad range of interests includes video and feminist artwork, new and social media, design, architecture, cultural administration and most of all, promoting Canadian contemporary art.

Her writing has appeared in exhibition catalogues and on Artnet.com, in Azure, ARTnews, Art Review, Border Crossings, Canadian Art, CV Photo, DesignLines, the Globe and Mail, Monocle, Quill & Quire, Toronto Life and other publications.

She works part-time with Profis Communications and consults on art and architecture. She sits on the board of ArtsScene, Toronto and on the City of Toronto Public Art Committee.

As a freelancer and blogger, I've occasionally had the pleasure of writing about some of the many amazing young designers in Toronto. From a bespoke cobbler who apprenticed with a Florentine shoemaker...

I went up to the opening of a new exhibition at Toronto's McMichael Gallery today. The exhibition was called You are here: Kim Dorland and the Return to Painting and it's on until January 5th, 2014. I...

There's a new round of digital entertainment companies participating in round two of ideaBOOST, the Canadian Film Centre's startup business bootcamp that began on May 21st. Scott Dyer, chief technolo...

A hugely innovative project of the CFC's MediaLab, ideaBOOST is billed as "a business and creative development lab" designed to help small companies navigate the entertainment and technology startup market by mentoring them with industry leaders across North America.

Last week, the Canadian Film Centre's CFC Media Lab launched a fantastic new program called ideaBOOST, designed to assist artists and companies exploring the frontier in digital entertainment. IdeaBOOST brings industry into the equation, and I think that's what makes it such an impressive concept. Here are several that sounded particularly exciting.

So what makes a great artist? That you have a fever, that you are obsessed. And it's just total commitment. And lots of lonely hotel rooms. You know it's kind of a lonely life. This is why I couldn't have children, this is why I couldn't be married, I could not. It's like being a soldier.

I found it brave of Cattelan to risk his work being seen as junk. But as Schejdahl points out, many of the pieces depend on proper curating to give them their strength. Some of his works are truly unforgettable. But not here. The art is actually rather forgettable here.

Patriotism is defined as a "love of one's country." Nationalism is a more complex thing, referring I suppose to one's nationhood, as distinct from one's homeland. It's a topic explored in the new show...

With all the condo development going on in downtown Toronto recently -- the good, the bad and the embarrassingly ugly (Hello there, Bohemian Embassy -- what is with that sign?!) has come a smart new w...

Tom Thomson had worked as a guide and fire ranger in Algonquin Park, so the fact that his death was declared an accidental drowning on what was a apparently a clear and normal day seems unusual. Even at the time, people couldn't believe it and rumours swirled about suicide and murder.

Who benefits from the granting system? The system supports artists, but artists come into public view only when their work is exhibited, by a museum, a commercial gallery or within the arts community itself.

General Idea, a Canadian art collective, are famous for employing a range of materials, like work in plaster, taxidermy and fluorescent tube. There is even straw on the floor of one fantastic installation. In it, the poodles (the artists) are contemplating the Canis Major constellation. It's quite funny.

If audiences for art are passing through museums without stopping to consider the art, then putting art -- at an enormous scale -- on the ceiling of a restaurant, or in the middle of a public space or on the edge of a waterfront view would seems like a good idea.

We have Nuit Blanche in Montreal and Toronto (which is a good start) and we have art fairs for collectors, but the question remains: how do we get the average non-art person visiting galleries and purchasing work by local artists?